Skates are a type of footwear commonly used in may athletic activities such as ice skating, ice hockey, inline roller skating, inline roller hockey, etc. A skate typically has a skate boot and a ground-engaging skate element such as a blade or a set of inline rollers attached to the underside of the boot permitting movement of the skate (and its wearer) across an appropriate surface. The skate boot typically covers all of the foot and part of the leg of a wearer.
Skates have been around for some time and are well known in the art. While in some ways similar to other footwear, they have their own unique design characteristics owing to the use to which they are put. Skating is not the same as walking, hiking, skiing, etc. Thus, for example, skates should be comfortable to wear while skating (especially during hockey play in the case of hockey skates), provide good control while skating (especially during hockey play in the case of hockey skates), and have a relatively long lifetime (as compared with some other types of footwear). The comfort and control provided by a skate depend on many factors including the hardness of the skate boot, the flexibility in the ankle in the area of the skate boot, the overall flexibility of the skate, the conformity of the skate boot to the foot of a wearer, and the weight of the skate. A skate boot's resistance to cuts, ruptures and impacts is also important because it contributes to the safety of the user and the useful lifetime of the skate. A skate's useful lifetime also depends on resistance to cyclic stresses and forces applied to the skate while skating.
Conventionally there are two different kinds of skates, which are separated according to the manner in which their skate boots are constructed. The more traditional of these is the “lasted” skate boot, while the other is the “non-lasted” skate boot (sometimes referred to as “molded” skate boots—although lasted skate boots may have components that were molded—and although there are other non-lasted methods of manufacturing besides molding). Each of these types of boots will be discussed in turn.
The “lasted” skate boot is made in a manner similar to traditional shoe making techniques. As the name would suggest, a last. (i.e. a, traditionally wooden, model of a foot used for making shoes or boots) or other similar form is used in the manufacture of this type of boot. The process of making a lasted boot starts with preparing the various materials from which the boot is to be made. This traditionally involves cutting out various shapes and forms from various layers of material (which might be leathers, synthetic fabrics, natural fabrics, foams, plastics, etc.) necessary to form the completed boot. These various shapes and forms are then superimposed on the last (usually one by one), worked to form the appropriate foot shape and secured together via any appropriate method (e.g. stitching, gluing, tacking, etc.).
While this traditional method has been employed for some time, and is still in wide use today, lasted skate boots have their disadvantages, most of which are well known in the art. Among them are the following: Given the number of actions and manipulations that are required, the manufacture of a lasted skate boot tends to be very labour intensive, and therefore more costly than non-lasted manufacturing techniques, meaning that lasted boots can be expensive to manufacture. Further, lasted skate boots tend to conform less well to the foot of a wearer given that a last merely approximates the three dimensional shape of a human foot, and that, in any event, the boots tend not to be of the exact shape of the last. Also, as the skate boot is made generally from layers of flat materials that are bent on the last to form the three-dimensional shape of the boot, after bending, these materials can in some instances contain stresses within them that may lead to the skate boot being more easily damaged. Further, lasted skate boots have a relatively long “break in time”, i.e. a period of time for which a wearer must wear the skates to break them in to get the skate boots to more comfortably conform to and fit the wearer's foot. Finally, lasted skate boots produced in this manner are not identical to one another (despite the use of the same last) since they are each individually made by hand. Their quality depends (at least in part) on the skill and craftsmanship of the person who put them together.
For these reasons, skate manufacturers have made attempts over the years at improving lasted skate boots. For instance, some have attempted to simplify the manufacturing process by reducing the number of layers of materials of which the boot is made, by adding in various molded plastic shells (usually in place of other materials), by making a flat “sandwich” of the layers of material of which the boot is to be made before putting the materials on the last and then bending the entire sandwich around the last. Some of these have been more successful than others.
The other predominant type of boot is the “non-lasted” skate boot. As mentioned above, this type of boot has conventionally also been known sometimes as the “molded” skate boot. Boots of this construction usually have a (relatively) rigid shell usually molded from a plastic or composite by any one of a number of conventional molding techniques. The shell provides the structure to the boot as it is (usually directly) molded into a three-dimensional shape during its manufacture, it is (usually) the mold that gives the shell its three-dimensional shape, and it is the shell's three-dimensional shape that will define the three-dimensional shape of the boot itself. The shell also carries most of the forces and stresses exerted on the boot while skating. The remainder of the skate boot components are affixed, either directly or indirectly, to the shell.
As is the case with lasted skate boots, non-lasted skate boots also have their disadvantages, which are themselves generally well known in the art. Specifically, non-lasted skate boots tend to be made out of relatively rigid plastics or composites that do not offer much flexibility (particularly in the ankle area), and are considered to be overly rigid in many cases by wearers. Moreover, given the amount of material required to make the shell have sufficient structural strength, non-lasted skate boots tend to be (relatively) much heavier than lasted skate boots (which is a significant disadvantage). Finally because of the rigidity of the skate boot, it is more difficult for the boots to break in and conform better to the foot of a wearer over time. Skate manufacturers have tried to ameliorate some of these disadvantages, again with more or less success over time.
In summary though, notwithstanding the advances in skate boot technology that have been made over time, no conventional skate boot, be it lasted nor non-lasted, is “perfect” nor its without drawbacks, and there is currently room for improvement in skate boot manufacturing technology.